Australian music festivals face uncertainty as ticketing company Lyte goes dark

A major US ticketing company has suddenly gone out of business, throwing Australian festivals into chaos as they scramble for answers for ticket-holders.

Lyte Ticketing has stopped operating and shut down its website, which now features a “be back soon” message.

It states: “Our website is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We should be back shortly.”

Queensland festival Rabbits Eat Lettuce and NSW’s Lost Paradise were among the Australian events to use the ticketing platform, with festival organisers now investigating their next moves for ticket-holders.

Lyte has laid off its staff and left a number of concert promoters unpaid for hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tickets sold on the platform, Billboard reports.

Rabbits Eat Lettuce organisers initially said they were unable to contact Lyte for clarification on the “unexpected” outage.

In an update on Wednesday, the festival said Lyte confirmed it had stopped operating.

“We have received correspondence from a Lyte representative, who has advised us Lyte Ticketing has suspended operations, therefore we have made the necessary move to change ticketing providers for REL2025,” it said.

“We apologise for this inconvenience Lyte has caused, and will be working to ensure a smooth transition with all existing tickets transferring to the new provider.”

Festival organisers said they decided to switch back to Humanitix and “put our trust in a locally based Australian company for stability, peace of mind and reliable service”.

“All Entry tickets and items, glamping etc that have been purchased outright will be automatically transferred to the Humanitix system and reissued to the same email used to purchase your REL2025 ticket through Lyte,” they said.

Lost Paradise organisers pushed back the sale of its festival accommodation to an unconfirmed date as it looks into the issue.

“We’ve been informed that our ticketing platform, Lyte, is currently offline, showing a ‘scheduled maintenance’ message,” it said on Tuesday.

“We are actively investigating the issue.

“Thank you for your patience, more updates to come.”

7NEWS.com.au has contacted Lost Paradise for further comment.

Lyte founder and chief executive Ant Taylor confirmed to Billboard he has resigned from the company.

An emergency board is seeking a potential buyer that could repay fans and promoters affected by the shutdown, according to Billboard.

It is unclear how many promoters and ticket-buyers will be affected by the closure.

Billboard reports major festival promoters often had several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ticketing inventory listed on the Lyte system, according to a lawyer representing potentially more than a $1 million in cumulative claims against the ticketing platform.

Lyte clients are reportedly concerned the platform go into administration without paying its clients any of the revenue from tickets it had sold on their behalf.

For small event organisers, that could equal nearly all of an event’s revenue, according to Billboard.

The outlet reports lawyers for several festival clients hope to pull their clients’ money out of Lyte before it goes into administration.

Lyte was launched in 2014 as a fan-to-fan ticket exchange where punters could list tickets to events they could not attend and ethically resell them to other interested fans.